The Bulletproof Warrior. Street Survival. These evocatively named classes were among the training electives taken by the officer involved in the Falcon Heights shooting last week.

A Twin Cities man who took one of the classes said he was greatly disturbed by what he saw — an instructor goading law enforcement students to not hesitate to shoot, and assuring them they’d be legally covered if they did. A promotional video for the other urged officers to visualize killing someone, to get “back in the game,” or get killed.

But supporters of the classes say their message is being grossly misunderstood — that the point is to make officers less nervous, and thus less likely to make mistakes or overreact. And they add that de-escalation is always stressed, first and foremost.

In addition to Yanez, St. Paul police spokesman Steve Linders said roughly 60 to 75 St. Paul police officers have taken the Bulletproof Warrior class, which is not required.

OUTSIDER’S VIEW

William Czech of Mendota Heights went to the class saying he was a student wanting to learn about law enforcement. He said he grew interested in use of force after a family member and friends had had negative interactions with police in the past.

He took two classes by Glen Ellyn, Ill.-based Calibre Press in 2014, one called Anatomy of Force Incidents, and another called Bulletproof Warrior — which he shared with Yanez.

The first went into the U.S. Supreme Court case Graham v. Connor, in which the court decided that “the ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.”

“It really was spreading the good news that Graham v. Connor is very permissive,” Czech said. “Really the message was that not reacting was a mistake because officer safety was compromised by not reacting at the first possible indication that something might be wrong.”

Then he took Bulletproof Warrior — the course attended by Yanez — which Czech said “was a slow drip of the same message. … The message that darn near anything could represent in the right conditions a threat that the officer could reasonably articulate.”

The course was co-taught by Calibre co-owner Jim Glennon, and another instructor, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, though Czech said he had problems solely with Glennon’s teaching.

In particular, Czech was disturbed by a video of a Minnesota state trooper who followed a drunken driver. The driver stopped but ignored orders for a time, and eventually pulled out a long gun, loaded it and pointed it — at which point the trooper shot.

As the man fumbled, “At this point, Glennon was saying — like just about every video we’d seen — why aren’t you shooting? … I saw a hero, who was trying not to kill someone, and he saw an officer who was screwing up, who was hesitating. He clearly didn’t like hesitation in any of these videos.

“I think the people that do this training, they are victimizing these officers. They came out of these trainings scared out of their wits,” Czech said.

‘BEST TRAINER I’VE EVER SEEN’

The course was taught at the St. Paul Police Professional Development Institute, which is accredited to both certify and teach classes for police continuing-education credits. It does so for law enforcement officials nationwide.

St. Paul police Cmdr. Ed Lemon, who was in charge of the institute at the time and attended the class, said Czech was way off-base with respect to the point of Glennon’s lesson.

“Jim is the best trainer I’ve ever seen in my life. … Does Jim ever say, ‘shoot, ask questions later’? No,” Lemon said. “I would say that’s a complete distortion of the event … and the fact is he (Czech) was looking to criticize the course.”

“The bulletproof warrior is about a mindset; it’s ‘do everything you can to de-escalate and get someone to willingly be taken into custody, but don’t lock yourself into something where you can’t transition if you need to be that warrior,’” Lemon said. “It’s not ‘be the aggressor’ — all of this is in response to threats. You’re doing what you need to do; you’re not underreacting or overreacting.”

Officers unaccustomed to extremely confrontational situations might freeze or overreact under pressure — and the point of the course was to get them to where they wouldn’t be nervous enough to do either, Lemon said.

As for the video of the Minnesota trooper, Lemon said, Glennon was mostly criticizing the fact that the trooper didn’t keep firing after his first shot didn’t kill the drunken driver, who was still armed with a rifle capable of penetrating armor.

Reached Thursday afternoon, Glennon said the Bulletproof Warrior course is now simply called Bulletproof, changed after some “political bodies” got skittish about the word “warrior.”

“Though the word ‘warrior’ was not used in the context that they think it was,” Glennon said. “The word ‘warrior’ has been hijacked by people in order to prove their false thesis, that law enforcement officers are training like military warriors, which is to shoot first, ask questions later; that everybody’s out to kill you, so you better kill them first.

“And there is absolutely zero truth to that in our course, none,” Glennon said, adding that he was “looking at some legal recourse right now about that because the information he (Czech) came out with is not true.”

STREET SURVIVAL

Yanez took another Calibre course called Street Survival in 2013. A promotional video for that course on Calibre’s website Thursday morning showed instructors speaking to a room full of students. As hard rock music plays in the background, one of the instructors begins to speak:

“If we’re in a room and somebody’s trying to kill us, we need to be ready to kill them right back. Have you visualized killing somebody? Have you ever thought about it? (unintelligible) made this stop, suspicious DWI, winds up with a pistol in his face, but he psychologically gets back in the game.

“And that’s what we have to work on, getting psychologically back in that game because even for a split second, we’re going to be taken out of the game. So we gotta get back in the game. That’s winning, ladies and gentlemen. That’s what we gotta do.”

By Thursday evening, the video had been removed from Calibre’s site and was no longer viewable on YouTube.

Robison wrote: “Like many companies in the business, Calibre promotes a ‘warrior’ mentality for police, likening cops to soldiers and focusing on conflict, vigilance, and martial skills. … Heart attacks, suicides, car accidents, and errors of judgment are all discussed, but most pervasive is the sense that an officer unaware of his surroundings is doomed to assault from an unseen threat — that any routine traffic stop can end in a shootout and that the only rational response is to be in a state of lethal alert at all times.”

Glennon said, “There’s one slide (in that course) with the word ‘warrior’ in the whole two days — it says ‘guardian heart, warrior spirit,’ and the next slide is all about balance. I had four slides about ‘treat people with dignity and respect.’ This is why I’ll never let the media in again.”

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

The term “warrior” has been a hot button in law enforcement.

After protests in Ferguson, Mo., following the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, President Barack Obama formed a Task Force on 21st Century Policing. In recommendations released last year, the group said, “Law enforcement culture should embrace a guardian — rather than a warrior — mindset to build trust and legitimacy both within agencies and with the public.”

The Police Executive Research Forum, a national nonprofit that researches policing, recently published a paper that echoed the president’s call.

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Forum, said he believes the Bulletproof course “flows in the face of the current thinking on de-escalation, which attempts to look upstream at what officers can do to protect both themselves, and the person they’re dealing with. It can’t simply be about officer survival.”

“When I read (the Forum report), I thought, this is really a challenge to the culture,” said Maplewood Police Chief Paul Schnell, who often speaks for the police chiefs association at the Legislature. “But I know some line cops will say, ‘It’s a bunch of (expletive) chiefs who don’t have a clue what it’s like to be on the street.’ ”

A 2015 column in the Harvard Law Review by Seth Stoughton, a former police officer and assistant professor of criminal law at the University of South Carolina, decried “a warrior problem” in law enforcement — a doctrine of hyper-vigilance and fear of lethal threat from “every individual, every situation — no exceptions” as creating a “substantial, if invisible, barrier to true community policing.”

“You have been told (repeatedly) that your survival depends on believing that everyone you see — literally everyone — is capable of, and may very well be interested in, killing you. Put in that position, would you actually get out of your car and approach someone?” Stoughton wrote.

St. Paul police commander Lemon offered multiple examples of criminals that acted friendly at first, before attacking, and believed many officers were not prepared for that — which he saw as a problem with training.

Andy Skoogman, executive director of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, said he wasn’t familiar with the Bulletproof class, but said, “There has to be a balance in the training approach between the guardian and warrior mentalities, and I think if you look at the wide scope of available trainings approved by the police officer standards and training board in Minnesota, you will find that.”

Yanez also took at least eight hours of use-of-force training every full year since he was hired in 2011, as well as two hours of de-escalation training in May of this year.

Mara Gottfried has been a Pioneer Press reporter since 2001, mostly covering public safety. Gottfried lived in St. Paul as a young child and returned to the Twin Cities after graduating from the University of Maryland. You can reach her at 651-228-5262.

As you comment, please be respectful of other commenters and other viewpoints. Our goal with article comments is to provide a space for civil, informative and constructive conversations. We reserve the right to remove any comment we deem to be defamatory, rude, insulting to others, hateful, off-topic or reckless to the community. See our full terms of use here.

Did you just wake from a coma or has cognitive dissonance reached a level with you that suppress’s all that is left with of your sense of humanity?
Their is an agenda and it is not being accepted by society. That mandate is
represented perfectly by this course offered to make cops into fear driven impulsive murderers. Kill first, answer questions later.

bannedsmoke

Not on the meds today, Mac?

Mac David

Actually I just got off your mother. Any idea where you sister is hiding?

Whodunnit

Well aren’t you classy. Don’t lie…you haven’t been laid since clinton was president

It'sme

Society is what counts not this agenda that some guilter writes. All cases should be treated individually, there is no pattern of AA males being hunted and killed by police. There is no data to support otherwise.

Don'tTreadOnMe

How low can this paper go? I heard the cop had a hard time sharing his Tonka truck in kindergarten. Mara go write a story about the racist 5 year old next. This is PATHETIC reporting at its finest , wouldn’t expect anything else from the PiPi.

Mac David

Try to get over it before you come completely unglued there cowboy.

JJ

Where are the articles describing Castile as being a Crip and doing illegal drugs?

Raj Beekie

Yes, the words warrior and caliber with bullet visual seem a bit too much. However, thanks to the many who serve as respectful police officers inspite of the many challenges they face on a daily basis.

Matt

Nice headline, PiPress. Where’s the ‘Fiery debate’? One non cop gives his views of the training, then a cop does. I thought the other paper in the Twin Cities was the worst for slanted articles, but you’re giving them a run for their money.

bigdrone

How idiotic has our society and our police force become?

“But supporters of the classes say their message is being grossly
misunderstood — that the point is to make officers less nervous, and
thus less likely to make mistakes or overreact. And they add that
de-escalation is always stressed, first and foremost.”

Sad lie.

Do you really think “Bulletproof Warrior” connotes “To Protect and to Serve”?

The cops who shoot first are cowards pure and simple. Pusssies. Cowards. It’s a hard dangerous job being a cop. If you can’t handle danger or uncertainty please DO NOT become a cop. If a guy voluntarily states he has a gun and a permit, put your hand down by your weapon but do not draw and obviously do not fire. If a person takes hold of their legal weapon and points the barrel at you, feel free fire away. Until that point, do not shoot and kill American citizens.

TJlock

So, police officers should just wait until the citizen gets off the first round, or until they get one stab wound or one good solid shot to the head with an iron pipe? That’s is exactly what you are saying if you believe a police officer should wait until they determine that an individual has a “legal” weapon and points the barrel at you.Man it’s easy to fiddle away on the keyboard and tell police officers what they should do in any given situation. If this situation went down just as you indicated perhaps the police officer should have drawn his weapon. When you have permit to carry and are stopped by a police officer you shouldn’t tell them you have a gun and a permit. You shouldn’t use the word gun.

Whodunnit

Well said

bigdrone

The bottom line is that an officer should give his life in the line of duty before he kills a citizen.

sawdustInmyeye

R U f n kidding me?

Kenneth Noisewater

Thank you for the most ignorant statement in the history of the planet.

I wish I had a time machine so I could go back in time and buy your father a lifetime supply of rubbers.

bigdrone

You don’t seem to be able to grasp simple concepts rubber man.

James Dawson

Wow! Hard to believe someone as stupid as you is still alive.

Harry Poppins

Black ignorance!!!

3m_t@3

Pull up your pants…go to class….get to work…end gang violence.

Observations99

Interesting hit piece. One of the main take-aways of this training is that situational awareness is critical for the police. This will reduce panic reaction shooting and teaches them how to recognize situations that are taking a dangerous path earlier. It also teaches them to take protective measures to maintain tactical advantage which increases the likelihood that an incident will not progress into violence.

Now I realize this doesn’t fit the current narrative, but the number of incidents where police could use force but don’t, far outweighs the number of times force is used. That doesn’t sell papers though and won’t generate donations to activist organizations. Isn’t it amazing that money always seems to play a role if you take the time to look.

Jon Jay

Watch videos of journalists and community activists taking ‘shoot/don’t shoot’ police training some time. 9 times out of ten they will shoot anyone and everyone in the simulations.

Kenneth Noisewater

Mara, holy God you are a hack. What a horrible article.

Toofcap

BM must be countered by a strong police response. BM has already murdered 5 police officers. The BMers demand more blood. God bless the police who will protect us from BM.

Harry Poppins

End Black ignorance!!! Get off your lazy butts, go to school, get a job and stop leaving your kids to be raised by their mother on welfare!!!

” citizen should cooperate with the police officer and do exactly as they are told. ”

He did that.

And he was murdered.

How could you be so stupid?

TJlock

So, you were a witness to the shooting? You *know* that he was cooperating and did exactly as he was told? Your claircognizance is astounding! A classic case of the Dunning–Kruger effect. You could be of valuable assistance to the police force. Why don’t you join up? Maybe you could be a part of the solution to the problem as you “see” it. Good luck…

lostoncampus

you do NOT KNOW he cooperated. Its NOT on the video, and whats her names word is worth dittly squat. If he touched the weapon, and the cop told him not to = good shoot. Media narrative will never allow this to be a valid shoot, because it would show (again) the really really great guy to be in the wrong.

Wait for the offical answer.

Jay Eagle

These classes are for chickensh** cops who were too afraid to join the real military where people shoot back. Much safer to just blow people away in their cars.

ManBearPig

We have soldiers deployed in war zones who are not allowed to shoot until being shot at by enemy combatants. Yet our own police can kill us as soon as they think someone might be reaching for a weapon.

Nom de Plume

Might be time to drift away from the narrative, drop some of the dozen or so articles regurgitating this event and focus on current events; the fatal shooting of several NOPD Officers would be worthy of attention.

AFrankKen

Officer Yanez did not name the police officer training course or design its lesson plan. Anyone that holds a professional license is required to take continuing education and additional classes can be required for promotion. It is quite common for these continuing training classes to have provocative titles in order to
attract interest. The class could easily have been called “Stayin Alive”, but
the Gibb Brothers took that one.

It is obvious that to be a newspaper reporter/writer there are no requirements for continuing training or ethics training of any kind and some reporters seem to prefer that Police Officers do not take any survival training.
With the body count of black on black murder climbing and the likes of Black Lives Matter encouraged to be marching and chanting for the death of Cops any sane person would admit there is a WAR out there for Police Officers. Three more Police officers were murdered today. Did they hesitate to protect themselves? I certainly hope no one uses the unapproved term “warrior” when giving their eulogy.

If we are going to use political correctness over the word “warrior” that officer Yanez
had absolutely nothing to do with, then it only fair that we attempt to be politically correct in describing the condition of Philando Castile when pulled over on July 6th. Phil has several citations for the possession of marijuana. Was Innocent Phil in the same condition as he was when driving in Diamond’s video of July 4th? Which would be the politically correct term we should use when seeking Phil’s condition? Was Phil; baked – blazed – blitzed – blown – blown out – blunted – bread – burned – caned– carmelyzed – crossfade – crunched – crunk – faded – flame-broiled – geeked –high – high as a kite – hurt – in like Flint – keyed – krunked – lifted – lit –
lit up – low – munchies – on the choongs – out of (one’s) element – pied –
pot-head – red – ripped – sketch – skunt – sloppy – smoked – stoned – strunk –
stuck – tall – or zoned?

When Phil’s toxicology report is released I certainly hope the reporters shine up their
political correctness.

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